by Ira Robinson
"For now, though, we've got to be careful, right?"
She nodded, the smile washing from her face. "I know. I'll call Malachi if anything happens. Don't worry about me."
"I do, kiddo. I do. All the time."
He knelt down and stared into the eyes of the sizeable dog, his black fur deep and flowing, with a mane of it coming from his neck. He always reminded Carver of a small lion and, if pressured, he knew Jessup would easily give one of those a run for its money in a fight. Flecks of gold reflected the light hanging above the counter, set into the deeper blue of his large orbs.
"Take care of her, okay?" grabbed the thick mane and playfully pulled at it. Jessup's mouth opened and ducked, as if he was going to bite Carver's nose, before the jaws closed and the tongue flicked out, washing the bottom of his face in one swipe.
Carver grinned as he let the dog go, rising to his feet and turning toward Lisa once more.
It had only been three days since the last time Carver heard from Biel, put on a mission he didn't completely understand. When the onus of the Hallow was first laid on him, there would be periods of weeks where he heard nothing, giving him space to recover some of his relationship with Lisa, and to try to learn as much as he could about what was happening to him. Then, starting the past year, the frequency increased, coming to the point it seemed he could barely breathe before the next package arrived and he was leaving her once again.
What confused him most, perhaps, was the seeming randomness of it all. Mostly, the demons he was sent to deal with were so small they were simple minions and nothing more. Only a few were what Carver would deem really worthy, major players within the hierarchy of Hell.
Maybe Biel wanted him to practice? Was that it? Letting him experience what it meant to be the Hallow before something much bigger came along?
There was no way of knowing. Biel had not made an appearance since that first night in the basement and Carver had no clue how to go about summoning him to ask questions. He was on his own, in more ways than one, and throughout it all, he had to keep pushing himself to try to learn more.
Malachi had been a big aid with that learning process, a good resource and a better friend than Carver deserved.
Though they met by chance, he often wondered if there was more to it than that, some kind of hand guiding them to meet in order to give Carver even a modicum of help.
The small room was smoke filled and stank of cigarettes and old coffee, a heady combination that turned Carver off almost immediately. Still, he plopped down in the hard wood chair and stared at the front, a single person adrift within the confines of a few dozen other chairs occupied by people who were just as lost and alone as he.
The familiar words were said. "Hello, my name is Mike, and I am an addict." "My name is John, and I am an addict."
A few told their stories while they stood in front of the audience, eyes filled with tears at how much their life had changed since they gave up the drugs and how extreme they had hurt those they loved because they got hooked when they shouldn't have.
Though his physical need was gone, the thoughts in his mind still swirled so much around running out and finding another hit, seeking out an alternative to cycle through the path of destruction his brain craved. Maybe it was because he had been a junkie for so long, or a subconscious way of trying to get out of the bargain he made with Biel. Whatever it was, the horrible feelings he had inside about it all led his feet to that chair on that particular night and sat him down next to a guy with a large frame and an even larger beard, who kept turning his head toward Carver and staring when he thought Carver was not looking.
When the line of people left the building, Carver did his best to hide among them, to slip away with the modest crowd onto the cold streets.
"It's not easy, is it?" a voice cut through the chill of the air.
Carver whirled to see the face of the man who had been sitting next to him, beard flowing awkwardly and out of control in the breeze. His eyes reflected the small smile on his lips, already reddening a bit with the biting wind.
"I thought we weren't supposed to talk about our problems outside of the meetings," Carver replied, back stepping a few paces. He couldn't sense animosity or the presence of a demon within the man, but it was tough for him to gauge what he was about.
"You've been touched by the dark, lad," he said, the wrinkles around his face focusing as he squinted. "I know how hard that can be."
Carver's brows furrowed. "I don't know what you're talking about, old man. Leave me be."
He turned and paced, but the footfalls of the older gentleman behind him followed. After a few seconds it was joined by the labored breathing the effort of moving forced the man into.
He whirled again, raising his hand. "I said leave me alone!"
"It's not been long, has it?" the old man asked, coming to a stop again a few feet away. "A few months, maybe?" He bent forward, resting his hands on his knees as the breath chuffed out of him. "I can help you."
"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I have things I need to do." Carver turned on his heels, hoping this time the old man would take the hint and go, but the words that came next stopped him in his tracks.
"They're going to hunt you down. She won't stay safe."
He grabbed the guy by the collar, lifting him a few inches and pushing him against the wall of the building they stood near. The breath flew from him as Carver's face twisted, reddening with rage.
A groan fled from the cracked lips in front of him as Carver hissed, "What do you know, old man? Huh? Are you threatening us?"
He let the man flail back to his heels but did not let go of the collar of his jacket, pinning the elder hard enough that it was obvious he was having trouble finding air again.
"I just...," A gasp. "Just want to help you."
Carver stared, hardening his vision to a pinpoint, searching for any sign of deception, but there was genuine fear plastered on him and Carver had no sense there was harm in him.
His fingers released, the pressure against the fabric coming away slowly, but he remained within inches of the man. "Help how? What do you know?"
Slow deep breaths filtered from his nose as he recovered from the savagery of Carver's push, his eyes wide as saucers, watching for another move against him. A few moments later, as Carver was about to rail against him again, he broke his silence. The white flecks of his salt-and-pepper beard caressed the top of his jacket collar.
"You don't have control, yet, and that puts you in danger." He hesitated before continuing. "It puts her in danger, too."
'Her' had to be Lisa, and, though Carver tried to restrain his emotions, to breathe through it and bring himself under rational thought, the mention of his daughter being in any kind of danger riled him.
"Leave her out of this," he growled.
"It's not me," the old man muttered, his eyes darting to the side. He refocused on Carver again and whispered, "You've got to control it, boy. Come to terms with it all, or you're both lost."
"Who are you?" Carver stepped back a single pace, glancing up and down anew, taking in the heavy jacket barely hiding a portly belly and a thick head of hair poking from the bottom of his cloth cap. He seemed innocuous enough, but the fact he knew more than he was letting on was obvious, and hedging against Carver was not going to go well.
"My name is Malachi," he replied, keeping himself pressed into the wall. He made no moves to break away or that he was speaking false. "I know it sounds strange, but I think we were meant to meet tonight."
"Why?"
Malachi glanced again, his eyes watery in the wind that kicked up as they stood in the building's eave. "Not here. Too many. Too many."
"Too many what?" Carver demanded, edging closer once more to the man.
"Of them. Open up, damn it."
Carver narrowed his gaze and, for a moment, was lost as to what was meant, but it dawned on him quickly that, while he had been paying so close attention to the encounter with Malachi, the re
st of his senses had seemed to reduce, tunneling into the single purpose of finding out what he could.
He opened his mouth and gasped as the pull inside his guts began in earnest and wheeled with his eyes wide.
Although he could not see them, there were entities present, hiding, perhaps, out of sight within the buildings, but nearby.
He closed his eyes and felt the power of his extra sight come on, the familiar headache beginning almost immediately. The world changed around him. The saturation, the way the sharpness of the edges of the buildings came into a hyper-focus, all of it both surreal and as natural as could be, at once.
"Oh my god," he muttered, his voice catching in his throat.
"Not quite," the old man whispered back.
They were everywhere, hidden among every shadow, their darknesses flat against the spaces he could not track. Glints of eyes reflecting the blurred light sparkling wherever he turned his own.
Their meeting had an audience, one made up of entities barely within the world they occupied, using the shadows and play of lights to camouflage themselves just enough that he could not get a handle on them, but he felt them all the same, now that he opened himself to them.
"Come to my home," Malachi offered, putting his hand gently on Carver's shoulder. Carver spun, raising his fist, the fear of the presence of so many demons igniting the core of his being, every nerve on edge and frayed in a heartbeat. When he realized he was staring into the face of the old man and not a demonic entity coming for his throat, he pushed away the impulse to strike.
"Where?" he gasped, closing his eyes and turning the sight off. The headache began to subside rapidly, but the pulse in his chest was wild and out of control.
"Come," Malachi said, pulling Carver's sleeve and walking faster than the younger man thought he could manage.
He followed Malachi down the street, casting his gaze everywhere he could, but with the hex-sight turned off, he could make nothing out of the entities he was sure were there. He had lack of discipline over his powers, still no surety of what he could or could not handle. If they all wanted to come for him at once, they could do him great harm, maybe even destroy him before he had a chance to do anything about it.
Biel had set him adrift in a sea of horrors on a very shaky boat, and no oars to steer with.
Malachi was true to his word though. When they reached the home of the old man, which was little more than a venerable church abandoned sometime in the past, with living quarters attached to it, he felt he could relax for the first time since the night the demon appeared to him and pried him from the muck of addictions he was mired within.
No entities aside from themselves were present in those once sanctified walls, no demons waiting to cajole or leer, nor pouncing horde. Something about the place held them at bay.
Over the next few years, Carver came to rely on the old man, who claimed to have once been a priest before he realized it was not his calling. He had powers of his own, and a fascination with the arcane, both of which caused pressure from the church, pushing Malachi to walk away from that part of his life and into a cycle of addiction of his own. He had a version of the hex-sight Carver did, but unlike Carver, he was unable to turn it off at will. Only when the haze of a high was in his head did he find any relief from the constant stream of voices and sights of things no human should ever be subjected to.
He hated himself for it, but Malachi was a victim of his own circumstance, born with abilities into a world that would not accept it, even while those same powers could be used to expose the darknesses that world was being slowly destroyed by.
That shared burden, perhaps, helped to forge a friendship unlike what Carver had experienced before, a closeness with someone who not only carried the same onus of abilities, but the core of addiction they both endured. It was a succor Carver never expected to have, and he was grateful for a fellow human being there he could lean upon, to know he could speak the crazy things in his mind and not have Malachi stare at him as if he needed to be put away.
While he spoke to Lisa about many subjects, some parts of his life had to remain silent between them, and at least Malachi understood when Carver would call in the middle of the night, awakened from a nightmare he could not shake, trembling against the wall he leaned on as the static hum of a phone tied him to another human being who cared.
He learned much from Malachi, privy to some aspects of the eternal balance Carver became a part of. They conferred frequently about the lack of intervention by God and his hosts to help the plight of the beings he created, leaving them to fend for themselves while the other side, the forces of hell, did their best to break every rule of the balance wherever they could. Always pushing the limits, pressing advantage when they could, and winning because of it.
Carver was somewhere between, forced into place like a nail struck badly, supposedly to keep the balance going but never fully understanding why.
Why didn't God, in his infinite power, simply force it all to end? Why the constant engagements between the angels and demons as they vied for a foothold?
And why was he chosen to be in that space between them, sent by a demon to destroy others of his own kind when it would mean a part of the edge hell had over heaven would fade, if only slightly?
That was a part of what bothered Carver the most, even when he would walk away from his latest mission, cleaning himself of the muck dealing with the unholy dropped on his spirit. Why did Biel choose the ones Carver went after? What was it about these particular demons that made them so dangerous, that a minion of hell itself would want them destroyed?
Malachi had no answer for that, either, though he suspected it had more to do with the hierarchy that humans were not entirely privy to, even with as much information as they had been able to gather over the centuries.
Carver obeyed what he was sent to do, but he was left with a feeling there was considerably more going on than he could fathom, and that lack of knowledge haunted him, quavering his soul to the point he longed for the days when he could simply send himself into oblivion and forget all the details he had learned.
But there was Lisa. His sweet little girl kept him anchored and pulled him back from the edge of destruction with her ready smile and generous heart.
He had to discover a way to figure out some aspect of things he could use, to get himself out of the geas that had been put upon him, to keep her safe and be able to walk away from his powers and disappear into the night with Lisa. Maybe they would be able to find a place of light, a space for themselves untouched by the darkness of hell and the angels of heaven, something they could call their own and never have to worry about it again.
Yet, even as he wished it, longed and begged for it, it would never happen. There was no part of humanity untainted by the forces of hell, and the God of creation sat in his heavens with his eye on everything. A baleful eye, perhaps, and a hand that refused to move to rescue his beings, the ones he supposedly loved above all else, but there nonetheless.
No, Carver had to fight, had to be in all of this mess when all he really craved to do was to see it done with. Lisa had to be protected, and the only way he was going to be able to get that was by following the commands of Biel, whether he truly chose it or not.
Malachi was a good help, and had taught him a lot about the powers contained in his body, the ways of the arcane he could tap in to if he needed them, and how to be a friend. He understood, more than anyone else probably could, what difficulties the hand of fate dealt him.
And, if anything ever did happen to Carver, if he did not make it back from one of these petty little game missions Biel sent him on, if he failed to survive and fell beneath the weight of all of creation coming down on his skull, Lisa would be safe in the hands of Malachi.
Carver stroked Jessup's head, the huge dog panting heavily in the kitchen's warmth and rounded on his daughter. She did her best to wear a smile for him, but the worry was there, all the same. She knew, as well as anyone, the risks Carver
took every time he went out.
"Come home, dad," she muttered, casting her eyes downward.
"Don't I always?" He grasped her chin and turned her face up toward him before planting a light kiss on her nose. "Be good, okay? Lock the doors and make sure..."
"I know, make sure to put the symbols back in place. I can handle it."
"And what's the litany?" Carver secured the pack against himself tighter, cinching the coil to keep it from moving.
She sighed, but it wasn't really out of exasperation. It was a familiar ritual, one they did every time he left.
"You wrap the sage around the salt, and the 'bacc around the sage, and you need to make it tight before you turn the page."